


pump the blood and leave it alone

by sxldato



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Blood, Doctors & Physicians, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Needles, Panic Attacks, Phobias, Trust Issues, Vomiting, and pretty detailed descriptions of how blood is drawn, bucky gets an award for not killing the nurse, but seriously there's a lot of talk about blood, fear of needles, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3163424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky gets his blood drawn. He doesn't like that it's a huge deal for him.<br/>That doesn't really prevent it from <em>being</em> a huge deal, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pump the blood and leave it alone

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this prompt idea in my head for MONTHS and i finally wrote it because i was like "i could put puke in this story"  
> people puking in general is great but people puking into _bags_ is even better for some reason??? i don't know why but it's sooo good oh my god  
>  some day i'll write a thing with steve. today was not that day sorry :/  
> unbeta'd because i'm lazy. let me know if there are mistakes  
> title is from I Need You by M83

The needle reflected the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, and he squirmed in his seat as the nurse removed it from its packaging.

“She’s just gonna take some blood, Buck,” Steve said. He was sitting in the chair next to him, and Bucky was worried that he was going to break Steve’s hand by holding it too hard. “They’re all good people here, they won’t hurt you.”

Steve had gone as far as having the nurse take _his_ blood before taking Bucky’s to prove that this place was safe, but Bucky still felt fear weave through his body, settling like a mound of cobwebs in his chest that was tough to breathe through.

The needle was small, a little thicker than his fingernail, but the idea of it pricking his skin and sliding into his vein had his heart slamming against his ribcage and his stomach in his throat. It was all very intimate, having someone slither just beneath the surface of you, drawing out the very substance that kept you alive, and all of Bucky’s experiences with that were far from pleasant. He was tired of people exploiting his body, putting things in him without asking and making him into something he didn’t want to become.

The nurse was a small woman who had a Captain America themed scrub shirt, which Steve and Bucky both thought was hilarious. She had a nice smile and she didn’t seem to be afraid of Bucky, which made him feel a little more comfortable. Other people’s apprehension made his own even worse.

That wasn’t to say he wasn’t uncomfortable right now. He was terrified.

“What do you need my blood for?” Bucky asked, his voice low and trembling.

“Your blood actually shows us a lot about your health,” the nurse explained, retrieving a few vials and scribbling Bucky’s name on them with long, scrawling handwriting. “We look at your blood under a microscope and look for any abnormalities in your red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, hemoglobin, hematocrit, mean corpuscular volume…”

His breath caught in his throat as she pulled out a strip of rubber and tied it around his arm, above the crook of his elbow. The veins in his forearm started to puff up, soft and blue under his skin. He felt wobbly and sick looking at them.

“What else?” He continued. “Tell me everything you’re gonna do with my blood.”

Steve’s hand was on Bucky’s spine, rubbing up and down to soothe him, but he didn’t tell Bucky to stop asking questions. They’d gone over this before they left; Bucky was allowed to ask questions, he was allowed to know what was going on. If he wanted the purpose of something explained before it was done—even something as simple as the doctor shining a light in his eyes-- they would do that.

The nurse smiled at him and took his arm gently in her hand, looking over it for a good vein. “It’s all testing to make sure your body is working as best as possible. Abnormal levels in anything could mean potential illnesses. We want to make sure you’re not in danger of getting things like anemia, diabetes, immune disorders, any heart diseases-- stuff like that.”

Bucky’s brows furrowed. “What do you do if I am?”

The nurse poured some rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball and swiped it over Bucky’s forearm. He knew what that was for; it had been used when his handlers gave him IV fluids. The smell reminded him of then, and it made the dull nausea in his gut skyrocket. “If you are, then we’ll tell you how to take care of yourself from that point onward so it doesn’t get worse.”

His grip on himself started to slip when she picked up the needle and attached the end to a long clear tube. His right hand shook, the left remaining disturbingly motionless, and his chest started to heave. A part of him was preparing for the chair to recline back and this room to fade away into another that was painfully familiar, for cold metal to secure itself around his skull and scorch his brain of any humanity he could possibly have left.

But Steve was there, right beside him, murmuring words of comfort as he pressed his lips to Bucky’s temple and pulled his dark unruly hair away from his eyes.

“You’re doing great,” he said. “You’re doing such a good job, Bucky. Just focus on me.”

He couldn’t focus on Steve. He needed to watch the needle go in, he needed to be present when the nurse took his blood, took what was his. How could he know she did what she said she would do if he didn’t watch? How could he trust her?

“You’ll just feel a slight pinch, and then I’ll take off the rubber strip, okay?”

He forced out a weak “okay” from his mouth. He watched with glazed over eyes as the needle lined up parallel to his arm, the pointed tip pricking his bulging vein and sliding in. Dark crimson, nearly brown—should it be that dark? What was wrong with it, something was wrong, something was so, _so_ wrong—began to flow through the thin tube. When it hit the end, there was a brief moment of terror where he thought it would leak out onto the carpet, but that didn’t happen, and he was too overcome with distress to ask why.

The nurse attached a vial at the end of the tube and his blood rapidly filled it up. She undid the rubber strap on his arm, and the blood started coming even faster. His toes curled and his stomach was in his throat.

“James, I need you to unclench your hand,” the nurse said.

He heard the words, but he couldn’t process them into action. Steve gently put his hand back on top of Bucky’s and pulled his fingers out of the fist they’d made. “Do you want me to tell you what she’s doing so you don’t have to look?” He asked.

Bucky nodded and turned his head away from his arm, burying his face in Steve’s shoulder. Steve wouldn’t lie to him. Steve had been honest when the entire world had spoon-fed him fallacies about who he was and who he used to be.

“She’s switching the tubes now to fill up a second one,” Steve told him, smoothing down his hair. “Are you holding up okay?”

There were tears in his eyes, but it wasn’t from the pain. The amount of panic racing up and down through his bones was so concentrated, so forceful, that crying was his body’s involuntary way of expelling some of it. “Why is it so dark?”

“The blood?”

“Yeah.”

“The blood is deoxygenated,” the nurse explained. “That’s why it’s so dark. There’s nothing wrong with the blood; it’s all just a matter of whether the vein is taking blood from the heart, or back to it.”

All this talk of blood was making him feel dizzy. “Is it almost over?”

“She’s on the last vial,” Steve said. “Just a bit longer and it’ll be all done.”

Bucky’s metal fingers curled around Steve’s shirt, holding tight, and the metal plates whirred as they recalibrated. His heart was still beating agonizingly fast—maybe that was why the vials were being filled so quickly—and it was getting hard to breathe. He could taste blood in his mouth.

“I don’t feel good.” His words came out hurried and slurred. He wasn’t sure that the end of this would even solve that problem. Fear like this could go on for hours, leaving him trembling and weak.

“I know, I know, it’s okay.” Steve kissed the crown of his head. “You’re being so brave.”

He felt something soft being pressed into his arm, but he didn’t want to look. “What’s that? What’s happening?”

“It’s just a patch of gauze—to catch any blood when she pulls out the needle.”

A shiver ran through his spine. “I don’t want—“

“It won’t hurt, I promise,” the nurse said. “Take a deep breath for me.”

Bucky did as he was told, and then when she told him to exhale, she pulled the needle out of his skin as he breathed out.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Bucky wanted to protest and say that it was, in fact, a horrifying experience, but he thought that might cross over into the area of his quips that Steve considered ‘unnecessarily rude,’ so he didn’t.

“Alright, I just put a Band-Aid over the gauze, so you’re good to go,” the nurse said. “You did really well today, James. I hope you know that.”

He was a little ashamed that such a big fuss needed to be made over taking three vials of his blood, so he didn’t respond, instead letting Steve help him to his feet.

And then made the mistake of looking over at the counter where the vials of his blood were sitting.

There was something deeply troubling about looking at his own blood. Other people’s blood was fine. He could paint that across walls like a goddamned mural and not be fazed. But _his_ blood, something that used to be inside him and now _wasn’t_ —that made his knees buckle.

“Woah, hey—“ Steve fumbled for him so he wouldn’t fall, grabbing his metal arm and pulling it around his shoulders. “Try and stay with me.”

Steve thanked the nurse and walked Bucky out of the building. The sidewalk was at a forty-five degree slant, and the rest of the world faded in and out of a vertigo-induced blur. The rational part of him knew that this was all psychosomatic, because there was no way he could be this woozy from three vials of blood being drawn. But the rest of him felt too sick to listen to the rational part.

When they reached the car, he collapsed into shotgun and Steve got into the driver’s seat.

“You really don’t feel good, do you?” Steve asked, radiating sympathy.

“I really don’t.” Bucky closed his eyes and breathed sharply through his nose. His mind kept going back to the blood, to the feel of the needle in his skin, and to the horrific smell of rubbing alcohol. It all became too much, and he bent over, resting his head on his knees to try and handle the overwhelming nausea.

“What do you want me to do to help?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky groaned. “I think I’m gonna throw up…”

“Okay, hold on—“ Steve rummaged through his jacket pockets and produced a crumpled up plastic grocery bag. “I thought this might happen, so I came prepared. Doctors’ offices never smell good, and it was probably even worse for you.”

Bucky took the bag and set it open in his lap. “Thanks, Steve,” he managed, swallowing back a gag. The plastic masked the smell of antiseptic that seemed to cling to him, but it didn’t get rid of it completely; combined with the lingering dizziness, soon Bucky was doubled over, retching painfully.

Steve was rubbing his back, the up-and-down motion of his hand exacerbating the queasiness in Bucky’s stomach, making him lurch forward and vomit into the bag. Bile dripped from his lower lip in long translucent strings. His head was pounding with the force it took to be sick. He gagged again, the veins on his neck popping out from the strain.

“Breathe, Bucky,” he heard Steve say, “slow and deep.”

He tried to take a breath, but it ended in a hiccup and he was slumped over his knees again, spilling more of the contents of his stomach into the bag. Eventually it died down to unproductive heaves, and finally Bucky sat back, the last of the nausea tapering off in quiet burps and hiccups.

“Feeling any better?” Steve tucked a loose strand of Bucky’s hair behind his ear, then coming to caress his cheek with his thumb.

“Yeah.” He caught his breath and lightly tied off the bag—he didn’t know if he would need it again—before setting it on the floor in front of him. “I’m… I’m sorry about—“

“You don’t need to apologize,” Steve insisted. “That situation could have gone _so_ badly, but you were amazing, and you were so brave.”

“It shouldn’t have been a big deal,” Bucky croaked. “Just a few tubes of blood—“

“It was a big deal for you,” Steve said. “Phobias can be really difficult to manage, especially ones created from what you’ve gone through. But you were great, and I am so, so proud of you.”

Bucky managed a wavering grin. “Thank you, Steve.”

Steve smiled back at him. “You ready to go now?”

“I was ready to go back before we left the house this morning.”

 

Bucky let himself fall asleep on the ride home.

**Author's Note:**

> "hero when will you write something that DOESN'T have puke in it"  
> do you want like the exact date or something because that's probably gonna be like a solid nEVER


End file.
